National conference on unity and reconciliation ends

A three-day meeting on unity and reconciliation, which brought together about 800 Rwandan participants, was due to end in the capital, Kigali, on Monday.

The object of the meeting - the second of its kind - was to bring together Rwandans from different stratum of society to discuss ways of bringing unity and reconciliation to realisation, a spokeswoman from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Mika Inamahoro, told IRIN. The National Commission would forward proposals resulting from the meeting to the government for Unity and Reconciliation, after which policy decisions would be based on them, she said.

Areas for discussion included the process of democratisation and decentralisation, the judiciary, the Gacaca court system, the reduction of poverty, and security in the Great Lakes region, the Rwanda News Agency reported. A "very broad" range of people participated in the group discussions, including government ministers, representatives of women's groups, the Rwandan diaspora, Gacaca judges, and heads of districts and sectors, Inamahoro added.

The previous meeting was held in October 2000.

Speaking in Kigali on Saturday, Mozambican President Joaquim Alberto congratulated Rwanda for dedicating itself to "the hard and complex" exercise of rebuilding the country and its social fabric in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide.

"In a relatively short period of time, you have been able to devise and put in motion a set of mechanisms for people to reflect [on] and debate events of the past and draw lessons to be used," he said.